Reining Shrums

I meant to post on this the other day, but I read it in an airport and was too tired to get back to it later in the day. Nevertheless, it continues to infuriate me.

It was the spring of 2004, and Senator John Kerry had just secured the Democratic presidential nomination. But as huge sums of money began pouring into his campaign, his top strategists had more on their minds than just getting ready for a tough race against President Bush.

Behind the scenes, they were fighting over the lucrative fees for handling Mr. Kerry’s television advertising. The campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, became so fed up over the squabbling that she told the consultants, led by Robert Shrum, one of the most prominent and highly paid figures in the business, to figure out how to split the money themselves.

Divvy it up they did. Though the final tally has never been publicly disclosed, interviews and records show that the five strategists and their firms ultimately took in nearly $9 million, the richest payday for any Democratic media consultants up to then and roughly what the Bush campaign paid its consultants for a more extensive ad campaign.

Mr. Shrum and his two partners, Tad Devine and Mike Donilon, walked away with $5 million of the total. And that was after Ms. Cahill, in the closing stages of the race that fall, diverted $1 million that would otherwise have gone to the consultants to buying more advertising time in what turned out to be an unsuccessful effort to defeat Mr. Bush.

Questions about how the Kerry campaign could have become such a bonanza for one small group of advisers — and whether the fees squandered money that could have been used for courting voters — are still reverberating inside Democratic circles as the 2008 campaign moves into high gear. And with more money than ever on the line this time around, resentment has been building, donors and other operatives say, at how, win or lose, presidential elections have become gold mines for the small and often swaggering band of media consultants who dominate modern campaigns.

Apparently, this is an affliction that only affects Democrats. The "standard" 15 percent advertising commission ended over two decades ago and Republican candidates have long realized that you pay your media buyers a fee, not a commission that only encourages them to waste more money.

But, then again, Republicans aren't afflicted with Bob Shrum.

Like other consultants, Mr. Shrum, who with his partners also earned about $3 million of the $7 million in fees paid by Vice President Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000, defended the fees he earned. “I don’t make any apologies for the fact that I managed to make a career out of something I love to do,” Mr. Shrum said.

Mr. Shrum, who is not involved in this year’s race, has been criticized for favoring the same populist themes in both the Gore and Kerry losses. But he and other Democratic consultants say the work has become even more difficult as the presidential campaigns get longer, the audiences become more fractured and the attacks and counterattacks force them to churn out more and more ads. They also said that they often had to pay subcontractors to help, and that the Republican consultants could afford to charge less because they earned more doing similar work for corporate clients.

So, why aren't Democrats able to hire consultants with day jobs advising corporate clients? That's why I don't get my knickers in a knot when I hear that Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's top adviser, runs a firm that helps its clients fight off union activity and other unsavoriness. Expecting lily-white purity from all aspects of our candidates campaigns leads us right into the arms of congenital losers like Shrum.

Over the years, the Democrats have tended to build their advertising teams around a few highly paid stars whose focus is politics, while the Republicans often spread their fees among a broad mix of political consultants and ad executives from Madison Avenue. Democrats have tended to pay slightly higher percentages of their advertising budgets in fees and commissions, but those small differences have often added up to millions of dollars in additional compensation.

That, in essence, is why Al Gore is not finishing his second term and instead we have the moral equivalent of a fructose-sweetened breakfast cereal for president. Remember, Nixon's chief advisers were ad guys. We need people who know how to tell good stories and how to make sure the right stories are told to the right people at the right time. And to apply best practices when compensating their advertising and media advisers. Once upon a time, Democrats were good at this. What happened? I've worked in this business for more than 20 years and am pretty certain the major advertising companies will not lose any business from their corporate clients for taking on the Obama or Clinton campaigns as clients.

It's all business. Nothing personal. And yet, our candidates go back to the well, time and again, with advisers who couldn't sell water in the desert, but who are pretty effective at selling themselves.